Wilco Sun Editorial

The publisher of The Williamson County Sun gets it! His editorial on transparency and openness that the citizens of Georgetown want and need is spot on! Read it and let him know that you appreciate the fact that he is looking out for you, a taxpaying citizen of Georgetown.

The Williamson County Sun, March 27, 2019 

Winds Aloft by Clark Thurmond, Co-Publisher 

Memo to council: Create transparent government

Back in October, with the 2019 session of the Texas Legislature about to start, the city council passed a resolution that outlined the city’s legislative agenda for the session. The council’s resolution begins by saying the agenda is “ ... in the best interest of the public it serves.”

The agenda opposes legislation that would reduce local control of, among other things, the city’s economic development authority, or place limits on the city’s ability to use efficient methods of financing city purchases and projects.

You may find it difficult to think what those “efficient methods” might be, but you can be sure they are not democratic methods. Efficiency is not a day-to-day feature of democratic government. Good government is efficient, but efficiency is a consequence, not a cause.

The city resolves to fight bills that would limit the city’s ability to increase property taxes. It resolves to fight lowering the increase that would trigger a rollback election. The city doesn’t like unfunded mandates, that is, costs imposed, but not paid for, by the Legislature.

Near the end, in the utility section, the council resolves to oppose any change to the current law “regarding disclosure of competitive sensitive information.” The proposed laws the city is fighting are House Bill 2189 and the identical Senate Bill 943.

These bills open, just slightly, the exemptions to disclosure that our utility department has used to keep you from knowing what is going on with the utility department you own and must pay for every month. The result of this secrecy is now playing out in the electricity flap.

The city has hired a lobbying firm that specializes in utility issues to help with this. So you are paying for that, too — paying lobbyists to keep you in the dark. But as the council says in its resolution, it is working in your best interest.

It is a peculiar puzzle — what is it about the utility situation that would be so damaging to you if you knew it? Although we’ve heard city folk say they can’t reveal this or that, because it is a “competitive matter,” we rarely, if ever, hear what that competitive matter, is or why you would be harmed if you and others knew it. But the city is lobbying the Legislature to avoid having to tell you anything substantial.

Right now the Legislature’s “Sunshine Bills” are languishing in committee. Those who benefit from a clueless public are working to keep them there. I suspect many legislators would be happy if the bills stayed in committee, or that they come out so toothless that they can vote for open government without actually having any open government. So we’ll see.

But Georgetown doesn’t have to wait for the Legislature to raise the standards of openness. Our council could, if it wanted, establish a higher standard right now. It could, in the true interest of its citizens, establish a policy of openness that aims at the highest possible standard rather than the lowest allowed by law, as is now the case.